Snow over, now on to basketball

Wednesday

Feb 27, 2013 at 5:31 PM

The Way I See It

Dennis Miller

Despite Rocky’s attempts to bring the world to a screeching halt things are slowly getting back to normal. Both Truman State basketball teams are in Warrensburg for games with Central Missouri State on Wednesday night. The men are coming off an impressive victory on the road at Lincoln last Saturday while the women try to win their third in a row and sweep the season series against Central. The Truman women are also playing for the right to have a bye in the first round of the MIAA playoffs and they need to beat Central for that to happen.

The MIAA didn’t used to have first round byes in their playoffs but now that they have 345 teams they have had to change their tournament format. The Truman men have already improved on last year’s overall record and conference record which is a perfect indication the program is headed in the right direction. The Truman men should have a better record than they have but the ball just hasn’t bounced their way for most of the year. As I have said many times in this blog the team’s record doesn’t indicate the whole story and this is a much better team than we saw last year. I think that if they can get some inside help through recruiting then that could be the final piece of the puzzle. It would be great if they could pluck someone out of the junior college ranks to fill that role or else recruit a top line freshman.

At this writing both Kirksville High School basketball teams play their first games of the district tournament on Thursday evening. The boys face Marshall who they have already played and beaten twice this year including a victory at Marshall in the last regular season game. The girls play the winner of the Moberly vs. Fulton game which is schedule to be played tonight. My guess would be the KHS girls would be playing Moberly but you never know. Either way the Lady Tigers have already beaten both teams easily during the regular season. I really don’t see anyone coming close to beating the Lady Tigers in the districts. The boys have the misfortune of being in the same district with Mexico which has one of the better boys teams in the state.

After their bitter loss against Kentucky last Saturday the Missouri Tigers will be in Columbia, SC to play the Gamecocks of South Carolina on Thursday. The Tigers beat the Gamecocks earlier in the season in Columbia but as this season has shown, the Tigers can come up with all sorts of creative ways to lose on the road. I would say that Mizzou is probably on the bubble right now as far as the NCAA tournament is concerned and they need at least one more road win in my opinion. I really don’t know that they can afford to lose any more games. The one thing they don’t want to do is put themselves in a position where they have to win the SEC tournament or at least go deep into the tournament to have a shot at making the NCAA tournament because I don’t see the Tigers doing that well in the SEC tournament. I would hope they would at least make the second round but it will be tough especially if they lose any more games.

After losing their first two exhibition games the St. Louis Cardinals got out their bats and have hammered the last two teams they have played. Of course that really doesn’t mean much especially this early in the spring but given the fact there is a foot of snow outside it’s at least something to give us hope for a brighter tomorrow. The Royals have also played reasonably well thus far early in the season.

The St. Louis Blues are in need of healthy bodies right now as the injury bug has hit them hard just when they seemed to be back on track. None of the injuries sound particularly serious so hopefully they can start getting some of the players back but the front line especially has been hit very hard by injuries as of late.

The Truman State softball team’s games this weekend have already been canceled and their chances of ever playing a home game aren’t looking so good right now. The baseball team in in the same predicament as spring sports were simply never met to be played in February in northeast Missouri. If the MIAA wants these games played as scheduled then they need to provide retractable roofs to all conference schools. Then again, we’re leaving the MIAA after this year so they would just make us give the roofs back.

We’ll be back on Friday with a look ahead to this weekend’s sports action and a look at whatever Rocky deems worthy of allowing to be played between now and then. Thanks so much for supporting this and all the other blogs. Your support and continuing interest is what keeps us writing.